ABSTRACT
This Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) Statistical Brief presents data from 29 States on hospitalizations across time periods with a focus on the initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of hospitalizations and in-hospital deaths for patients aged 65 years and older is presented overall and by patient characteristics across 29 States from April to December 2020 using quarterly HCUP inpatient data compared with State-level averages from April to December in 2016–2019 using the HCUP State Inpatient Databases (SID). The percentages of all hospitalizations and in-hospital deaths related to COVID-19 during the April–December 2020 timeframe are also provided. Because of the large sample size of the HCUP data, small differences can be statistically significant but not meaningful. Thus, only differences greater than or equal to 10 percent are discussed in the text.
ABSTRACT
Across the United States, school districts are grappling with questions of whether and how to reopen and keep open elementary and secondary schools in the 2020-21 academic year. Using household data from before the pandemic (2014-17), we examined how often people who have health conditions placing them at risk for severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) were connected to schools, either as employees or by living in the same households as school employees or school-age children. Between 42.0 percent and 51.4 percent of all school employees met the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) definition of having or potentially having increased risk for severe COVID-19. Among all adults with CDC-defined risk factors for severe COVID-19, between 33.9 million and 44.2 million had direct or within-household connections to schools.